August 31, 2013

Long time no blog! I went on vacation, and then I had to do all the work I didn't do while I was on vacation. And now Labor Day, the school year, and the High Holy Days are charging down upon me, but I'm determined to get back on the horse.

One of the things I took on vacation was the used Nook I recently got from a friend. I hadn't had it for very long, but I was already becoming used to taking long fanfic with me instead of always having to read it at my desk, and to reading larger print when I feel like it. The Archive of Our Own lets you download stories in various formats, so I've been saving them as EPUBs and loading them onto the Nook.

So of course one of the things I *did* on vacation was get the Nook wet. Not even in the ocean -- my water bottle opened in my bag. I rescued the Nook almost immediately, put it inside a bag of rice and left it there for a week, but I think I killed it -- when I plug it into the computer the computer doesn't even recognize that there's anything *there*. The Bronte sisters' faces just keep mocking me.

Nook, we hardly knew ye.

"Crumbs, I said, "maybe I'll look into getting another one. All I want is something to read black & white text on, I don't need WiFi or a color screen. How hard can it be?"

August 29, 2013

I had to make a list of American Presidents and a search turned up this list. What caught my eye was the fact that the US didn't have a Vice President for several extended periods of time, including after the death of Elbridge Gerry (from whose name we get gerrymander). I was tempted to title this Your Bucket of Warm Piss Friday Open thread, but Garner's other comments on the post were better:

The Houston Post (November 8, 1967) related the story that he told to a circus clown: “I am vice president of the United States. you’d better stick around a while—you might pick up some new ideas.” San Antonio Light reporter Tom McGowan wrote in his farewell that Garner had referred to being elected vice president as “the worst mistake in my life” and repeated the reference to Garner’s assertion that the office was the “spare tire of government.”

August 28, 2013

When I was young I became aware of the theological debate over the "unforgivable sin." Did it exist – was anything irredeemable, beyond even Christ's mercy – and if so, what was it? The discussion on that was above my paygrade at the time, but it seemed to involve sinning (blaspheming?) against the Holy Spirit, whatever that meant. The crime may have been utter despair: if you are no longer capable of hope, rejecting even the possibility of belief (through the grace of the Holy Spirit), you cannot be saved. Or something like that; it was all pretty murky. Then I left the church, and abandoned this particular topic.

Meanwhile, however, I became aware that in the flesh-and-blood world of American law, politics, and public opinion, there were also crimes that were far worse than others, crimes that took their alleged perpetrators beyond the pale of the law. Not, as one might expect, murder, rape and arson; however terrible these were, even worthy of the death penalty, they were covered by the system. No, the great crime in those Cold War days was Communism, or association with it (past or present), or suspicion of it. "Reds," it was often argued, should not be granted freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom from self-incrimination, etc., because of the heinousness of their beliefs and actions. Since they would, if they won, deny all freedoms to us, we were entitled to deny a few rights to them. (Yes, they could "take the Fifth Amendment," but that in itself might incur further sanctions, as well as public opprobrium and the likely loss of livelihood.)

Not for nothing was the anti-Communist crusade often referred to as a "witch hunt," since it echoed medieval and early modern campaigns against beings believed to be in league with the forces of darkness, whose wickedness could only be overcome by extraordinary procedures (the Inquisition, anyone? Witchfinder General?), suspending normal procedures in the interests of public safety.

In some jurisdictions any member of the Communist Party was required by law to register as an agent of a foreign government, since it was well-known, or at least well-believed, that they took their orders directly from Moscow. If they comprehensively repented, repudiated their ways, and ratted on their former colleagues, "Reds" might be redeemed, but unrepentant Reds were unforgivable.

(I don't have the energy to provide links to all the details of this horrific era, but they should not be hard to find.)

Flash forward half a century and things have changed. To be a communist nowadays is to be considered foolish rather than evil. But there are still two "sins" that are so terrible that they can deprive the (alleged) sinner of his/her rights. One, of course, is "terrorism," in the years since 2001. If accused, anyone might wind up in Guantanamo, with no right to a trial (much less a speedy one), no right to confront accusers, extremely compromised rights to counsel, and a host of other legal barbarities. And if that anyone is so careless as not to be an American, things can get even uglier. But we all know this, I trust. The rules, even the Bill of Rights, have to be suspended for our own protection. We Are At War With Terror.

Less extreme, but scarcely less unforgivable in today's America, is pedophilia. This has been demonized far above most other non-political crimes, and far beyond what it was when I was growing up. Don't get me wrong; it was widely disapproved of, even when not actually criminalized, though the 1957 marriage of Rock-&-Roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis to his 13-year old (third) cousin stretched the social fabric a little. It was also looked down on within criminal society, we were told; "child-molesters" had to be isolated from other prisoners so that they would not be attacked by ordinary drug pushers, murderers, and rapists.

Recently, however, the clamor over the "evil" of pedophilia has been greatly amped up, both in law and public opinion, far beyond what it used to be. Laws have been made much more stringent, including prohibitions on photos of under-aged models; parents have been arrested for posting pictures of their own unclothed children. TV programs ambushing suspected pedophiles appear in prime time. Public campaigns to be on guard against strange and dangerous men are everywhere ("Stranger Danger!"), and we are encouraged to report anyone suspicious to the authorities, just as we were told to watch our neighbors for signs of "Red" sympathy Back In The Day. Experts are wheeled out to claim that pedophilia – unlike any other kind of criminal activity or predilection – is essentially incurable, with abnormally high and possibly fictive recividism rates, so there is little or no hope of redemption. (Whereas there used to be a sellers' market for articulate ex-Communists, I'm aware of no such public acceptance of reformed pedophiles.)

Convicted sex offenders (not just pedophiles, but clearly these are the primary targets) after completion of their sentences are required to register with the police, and in some cases even to inform all their neighbors of their status, unlike any other criminals, AFAIK. (Can you imagine opening your front door to some guy who says, "I've just moved into the next block and I am required by law to tell you that I've got three convictions for breaking and entering, plus two more for grand theft auto, not to mention a handful of domestic abuse counts"?) There are restrictions on where they can live or even walk – not within specified distances of schools, etc. – and they are treated as perpetual perverts rather than as prospectively rehabilitated citizens. (I realize that life is not easy for any ex-cons in the USA, but the life of a certified "sex offender" seems to be worse than the rest.) Even their freedom of speech can be/has been curtailed; several states have attempted to bar them from Facebook. Extraordinary criminal penalties have been mooted, including "Chemical Castration" or worse. All this because they are, supposedly, so inherently evil that they are not entitled to the rights of "normal" Americans like you and me, ordinary housewives and car salesmen and hookers and Wall Street bankers. Just Think Of The Children!

Like "Communism," both "terrorism" and "pedophilia" have been loosely defined in the public imagination (and sometimes in law), so any harm that may have been done by those at the core can easily come to be associated with those on the periphery. The "fellow-traveller" is virtually as bad as the Comintern agent. The idealistic or misguided individual who contributes money to the wrong Middle Eastern cause is tarred with the same brush as the suicide bomber. The 16-year old who fondles his (or her) 13-year-old lover may be caught in the same web as the brutal penetrator of a 7-year old. By now we are all, I hope, familiar with draconian laws that may be applied to those guilty of little more than foolishness, and with the all-purpose labels – "Red," "terrorist," "pedophile" – that can permanently follow those accused of seemingly unforgivable crimes.

As with my post on TGAN, my interest here is not so much in the details, some of which I may have fumbled, but in the defining framework. Do we – does the USA – require an "unforgivable" crime in our public imaginary? (If so, what was this in the intervening years between the Red Scare and 9/11 – crack cocaine, perhaps?) Must there always be something that is so exceptionally bad that our rules don't apply, our basic freedoms can be repealed? Is there something in us that rebels against the concept of truly universal rights, insisting instead that we are forever in combat with forces so wicked we need to overcome our natural softness (empathy?) in favor of righteous anger? Are we thus eternally compelled to suspend our "liberal" practices and revert to the primordial war of Good (us) vs. some designated Evil (them)?

If it wasn't Communism, terrorism, or pedophilia, what would it be? What will we next project as "unforgivable," a pretext for abandoning the restraints of legality and civility, revoking the rights and ruining the reputations of those we choose to define as beyond the pale?

August 27, 2013

Who/what would we be acting on behalf of? The United States/American people? The United Nations? Some subset of the latter? The Assad opposition? Noble ideals? A "red line"? Some of the above?

Perhaps the question I'm most interested in at the moment: what legal document will the President point to authorizing him to commit an act of war against Syria? Or have we reached the point that no one cares anymore as long as the "right" people/nations/things are being targeted?

When do we stop? Is this some sort of Goldilocks bombing campaign with just the right amount of explosive ordinance, neither to much nor too little? How much of a deterrent is this to any future would-be users of chemical weapons if, after the proper amount of bombing is applied, Assad is still there and, indeed, if he's around three years from now?

How much is this going to cost? Could the money be spent better elsewhere?

August 22, 2013

Not long ago my brother (the opera singer) recommended to me Richard Powers, The Time Of Our Singing as perhaps The Great American Novel. I read the book, which elegantly combines a deep appreciation of music with the story of several decades of race relations in the USA, and was much impressed, though it wasn't for me – not a serious musician – quite as Great as all that, certainly not TGAN.

Which led me to musing – why do we seek The Great American Novel , and look for it every generation among the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, Dom DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon, and even a bunch of writers you've never heard of? Or Philip Roth, who actually wrote The Great American Novel back in 1973. Do other countries have a "Great ___ Novel"? If so, what is it? If not, why not? Based on my spotty, dimly-recollected education and peregrinations, I came up with the following:

England has Shakespeare, a playwright and poet (we tend to think of him in that order; he probably would have reversed it) as The National Writer. Novelists, too, headed by Austen & Dickens, perhaps, but no need for a Great one when you've got Shakespeare.

Germany: Goethe, similar.

Italy: Dante, similar.

Spain: Aha! !Olé¡ Don Quixote certainly qualifies as The Great Spanish Novel, with no competitors. Cervantes stands head and shoulders above all other writers in national esteem.

France: Certainly productive of many fine novels, but is any of them The Great one? Les Miserables? À la recherche du temps perdu? And how would Hugo or Proust stack up in the public mind with Racine and Moliere, or France's greatest poets? I'm not seeing here a consensus on who the greatest writer was, much less an obsession with determining (or writing) The Great French Novel, but I may well be missing something. Flaubert? Zola? Camus?

Russia has two great novelists, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, each with at least two memorable books (War and Peace and Anna Karenina; Crime & Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov). Despite Chekhov and Pushkin and many other fine writers, this appears to be a fairly defined race, with War and Peace the presumptive winner as TGRN on points.

Outside of Europe my knowledge is even spottier. India has fine novelists, but there's no chance they'll ever displace the Ramayana or Mahabharata. (Do Indians have The Great Indian Epic conversations, and if they do, who's winning?) China's got The Dream of the Red Chamber and Monkey and Water Margin, but one never senses that the novel is, or is believed to be, the key to understanding China's character. Likewise The Tale of Genji, often lauded internationally as the world's first novel (and one of its finest), but my feeling is that Lady Murasaki is not seen in Japan as defining the essence of Japanese culture, nor are writers today striving to supplant her in writing TGJN.

Jose Rizal, on the other hand, unquestionably wrote TGPN. Noli Me Tangere, along with its sequel El Filibusterismo stands in Philippine literature as Don Quixote does in Spanish, but perhaps even higher and more central, given the comparative lack of competition. (Not that there aren't good Filipino writers, but none have succeeded at anything like that level.) It's a damn good read, too, in an overwrought melodramatic late-19th century way, and available in several translations from the original Spanish (I haven't seen this latest one).

The Tale of Kieu occupies a similarly central place in Vietnamese literature, but technically it's an epic poem (Kim Van Kieu) rather than a novel.

The Great Indonesian Novel is actually a tetralogy: The Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, but it's comparatively recent and, I suspect, known only to a relatively elite portion of the population, unlike older epics, often presented through shadow-puppet theatre (wayang), which have been internalized by the masses. In another couple of generations, however, it may have implanted itself somewhat more deeply in the national psyche, who knows?

Latin America has outstanding writers, but I have no real sense of how they stack up against each other in the regional, or various national, minds. How does novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez compare with poet Pablo Neruda or short-story writer (and essayist, &c.) Jorge Luis Borges? I simply don't know.

So that's it from this particular vale of ignorance. Does the USA need The Great American Novel? If so, what is it (Moby Dick? Long and boring. Huckleberry Finn? Really a kid's book?!)? And If it be not now, yet will it come? The readiness is all.

August 18, 2013

This Slate article links to a zoomable map of the US that "features 308,745,538 dots, each smaller than a single pixel and each representing one person: Caucasians are blue, blacks are green, Hispanics are orange, Asians are red, and other races are brown." Pretty amazing. What do you notice?

August 15, 2013

In another edition of "russell asks," he queries why we can't/don't tax wealth rather than income.

There are a number of reasons for this, some better than others. Let's assume the federal government set a wealth tax at 2%.

First question is: 2% of what. Presumably of the fair market value of your net, but not gross, assets (that is, less any debt outstanding, but it wouldn't have to be that way).

That leads to the second question: how do we measure fair market value? In cases like publicly traded securities, it's easy: the closing price on 12/31/2013. But for other assets, it's much more difficult. Certainly houses are more difficult than stock - and we do impose a wealth tax on houses at the state level but it's called a "property tax" (and at the gross value of the house no less) - but probably doable. But what about my car(s) (although some states base registration fees on FMV)? Or my boat? Or my persian rugs? Etc.

We could of course make simplifying assumptions, e.g., all 2003 Honda Civics are valued at $X - that seems a little unfair to the person who has 200,000 miles on it vs. someone who only has 10,000. Or we could tax only easily measured assets like publicly traded securities (we'd have to decide what "publicly traded" means, and there's at least one, if not more than one, very long definition of that in the Code) and "large" assets like houses - perhaps piggy backing off the state's valuation for property tax purposes (and maybe subtracting out the outstanding principal of the mortgage). But this would allow folks with very nice cars, yachts, Picasso collections, etc., off the hook.

To compensate for this we might try to make it progressive by saying 2% of assets above $Y, but that wouldn't eliminate the need to measure your assets. OTOH, we kind of do this now with the estate tax, but that's one time only event, not yearly. If $Y was set high enough, perhaps yearly measurement wouldn't be an issue.

Another question, although a similar problem arises with the income tax, is why measure on 12/31 each year? Why not more often, or less often? And what happens if there is, e.g., a huge run up in the stock market in December followed by a collapse in January (say the financial crisis hit January 15), and now my stock is worth $50 but valued at $100 for the 2% tax?

Ability to pay might be an issue as well, which is generally why there is income tax withholding on wages (and certain other payments). Suppose I'm retired, living in the house I paid off over 40 years, living on social security, and the neighborhood is much nicer now than when I moved in. Now there's a 2% tax on my house, that could be a large chunk of my income, and I might either have to sell my home, take out a loan, or perhaps a reverse mortgage.

Other issues: what to do about pensions, 401k, IRAs, etc.? Is there a separate wealth tax for corporations, trusts and other legal entities? Are charities exempt? How do we value intangible property? Do we keep the current "worldwide" system of taxation in place? Would this cause wealthy people to renounce their citizenship?

There may also be a Constitutional problem, which is whether a wealth tax is a "direct tax" that must be apportioned among the several states. I don't think the Supreme Court has ruled something a direct tax in more than 100 years because the apportionment clause is, well, stupid and nonsensical. (see this article), but I can see the current court ruling that such a tax is "direct."

It might be easier to tax wealth now than 100 years ago, but it's not as easy as taxing income, or at least we have much more experience taxing the latter and the infrastructure in place to do so. That said, until recently many countries in Europe had a wealth tax (and probably some still do), so maybe we could learn from them.

Finally, there is the Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules. Which might be the best and simplest explanation.

August 12, 2013

Russell asked if I could say something about how Fukushima is looking over here. As with most things I post, it probably less about what things look like and more like the way I look at things, so caveat lector.

August 09, 2013

A ghost bike or ghostcycle is a bicycle set up as a roadside memorial in a place where a cyclist has been killed or severely injured (usually by a motor vehicle) Apart from being a memorial, it is usually intended as a reminder to passing motorists to share the road. Ghost bikes are usually junk bicycles painted white, sometimes with a placard attached, and locked to a suitable object close to the scene of the accident.

This reminds me of something one often sees in the Deep South (and perhaps in other places), which is roadside memorials where people have had accidents. However, the impulse for those, I think, is less for traffic safety and more to commemorate the passing of someone, but I see a connection between the two. Any ghost bikes where you are?

August 08, 2013

We have already mailed in our votes for NJ's Special Primary Election this coming Tuesday, as we'll be out of state on vacation next week. I'm going to take a moment out of my frantic getting-ready-to-go schedule to say:

Rush has been my Representative since 1999. Even if he hadn't been our neighbor for much of that time, I would still say he's pretty much what I would ask for if you could cook up a Congressman in a vat to my exact specifications. He's incredibly smart, he's deeply progressive, he's not beholden to Wall Street, he both understands and cares about deeply important issues: economic inequality, climate change, and resisting the national security state.

There are two reasons I urge my NJ friends NOT to nominate Cory Booker, the front-runner:

As Charles Pierce and digby have documented, Booker is on the side of Big Money. It's crucial that we have Senators who will at least attempt to hold the economically powerful accountable. Booker will not do this; Holt will.

Holt has over a decade of experience in Washington, including serving on the House Intelligence Committee. He actually knows what's going on there. Booker does not, which means he will get his information and ideas from lobbyists and the powerful. Holt will push back against the kind of thing Ugh writes about in the previous post; Booker will not.

I put in many hours with Rush's campaign in 2000, and have helped him with time and money when we could over the years. If you're in NJ and have time this weekend, please consider helping him out with phone banking and door-to-door. Whether you're in NJ or not, please consider donating to his campaign.

And yes, we had this bumper sticker on our old car:

but that's not the only reason we support Rush Holt. He's a wonderful, thoughtful guy, a great neighbor, and one of the finest public servants I have ever had the privilege of voting for.